Looking for a path
When I was a child, I wanted to be an ER doctor to fix people’s health issues, a mayor to fix people’s daily life issues or an urbanist to fix cities’ issues.
When I was a teenager, I spent a lot of time trying to find ways to improve systems, mainly public transportation systems. I still can see myself drawing networks and maps on paper, trying to find the best way to divide streets with a fair repartition between all kind of transportation.
During all my life, I stopped counting the days spent on SimCity 4 and Cities: Skyline modeling always the same cities, improving day after day all the neighborhoods and infrastructure in my virtual piece of land.
When I look back as far as I can see, the common path between all my wishes for my future professional life was to find a way to enhance people’s life.
If I told you this story, it’s because these last two years, my life changed. I mean, my life changed a lot. In fact, I think I learned more about myself over the last two years than during the rest of my life.
First, on a really pragmatic (and geographical) side, I left my hometown where I almost always lived – Strasbourg, France – to move in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Since then, I think I’ve never regretted once this choice. When I look back over my life, it was the only viable solution for me to definitely heal from my burnout.
On a more personal side, this emigration helps me to build – I hope – stronger relations with my two closest friends and my family. Let’s be clear, I’m not saying it’s easy to be distant from them and from my boyfriend. But I really think my relation with all the most important people in my life evolved in a good way. But stop talking about my personal life, let’s be back to the subject: looking for a path.
When we are in high school or at the university, there’s one very important thing nobody taught us: how can we stop ourselves and find the time to look for a path when we are completely lost? It’s something difficult you need to learn by yourself.
It took me several months to find the answer and a new path to follow. It’s almost like if I needed to build my own new path from scratch. But to build a new path, you need to know the direction to follow.
One day, a recruiter contacted me and asked me if I wanted to apply for a job outside of my comfort zone: a full time position as a UX designer. I always avoided this kind of offer in the past, mainly because I didn’t want to choose between design and development.
Frontend development is not like it was five years ago. I love HTML, CSS and WAI-ARIA but nowadays it doesn’t matter. When you look for a frontend developer job, the only thing that matters is JavaScript. JavaScript is everywhere, even when it’s not really needed.
React, Vue.js, Angular, and — in few weeks — the next trendy framework are the only things that matters for recruiters right now. If we don’t look at the languages used, what’s the real difference nowadays between a backend and a frontend developer?
So I accepted. I applied. And I’ve been through the complete recrutement process. I discussed with more than 6 in-house UX designers. I discussed and I explained my process, my skills and my ideas. They showed me that I was capable of doing design. Even if I thought I was an impostor because I was autodidact, they showed me I was capable.
Few month after this recruitment process, I’m about to start a new job as a full time UX designer. I always said I don’t want to choose between design and development and do both. But when we take a look to the frontend development work now, is it still the same work as the one I chose 6 years ago? I’m really not sure.
That’s why it’s important to stay open to opportunities. Even if you’re not really looking for a new position. When you are part of a good and professional recruitment process, you can learn a lot about yourself and see things you haven’t seen before.
Fighting for the users, all of them. Finding ways to fix their issues and to enhance their experience. Refusing the concept of edge cases. That’s the path I tried to follow few years ago when I started my career. That’s the path I lost and was looking for few month ago. That’s the path I starting again to build in front of me.
When we are in high school or at the university: there’s one other very important thing nobody taught us: how to say goodbye.
Few days ago, I found myself strugling with my resignation. I was not sure how to handle this situation, how to communicate, what to say and when. At the university, we can follow lessons explaining us how to behave in a job interview, how to animate a meeting or how to interact with a colleague. But I never found a workshop explaining me how to say goodbye to a team.
When you have to resign from your position to follow a new challenge, it can be difficult to find what to say. It can be even more difficult when you like the project you are currently working on.
We evolve. The products and the companies we are working for evolve too. Unfortunately, sometimes we all evolve in two really different ways. Saying you are not the best fit for a position is not easy but it can sometimes be the best choice you can do for yourself, and for your company. It’s also the best way to avoid conflicts and manage expectations with your colleagues and managers.
I like what we are doing with the product. I would love to see how the product will grow in the next months. But I’m just not sure I’m still the best fit for the team.
Since the first website I sold in 2010, I always tried to not make a choice between design and development. Mainly because I thought it was important to understand all the complexity and the work behind a website to deliver a good work. But it was mostly because I was afraid to do only design tasks because I’m a terrible graphic designer.
Interface design is a job, graphic design is another one. I will never know everything, and that’s totally ok! A good designer is not someone with a lot of knowledge about everything, it’s someone not afraid to ask the good questions. And actually, I’m pretty good at asking questions.
When I read Mike Monteiro’s book Design Ethics, it reminded me why I wanted to be a designer. Why we needed to be user focused and why we all need to try to be better humans that we are.
A good design is not the most beautiful one. A good design is the one which helps people in their life by fixing their issues without hurting them.
Everytime we codesign a product with users, we want them to remember the past to understand the current need and draw the future. Why is it so difficult to do the same with our own life?
In fact, I used UX tools in my real life: I stopped, tried this small exercise. I found answers from my past to decide how my future will look. And I learned how to say goodbye.
When I was a child, I wanted to help people by fixing their daily life in a lot of different ways. It took me almost 20 years to see the path I tried to draw when I was in primary school. Now, I’ll try to not loose it again.
PS: Thank you to the VC4Africa team I worked with these last 10 months. Your time and your support was really helpful. I learned a lot being part of the team. I hope the following step in my career will be as positive as our collaboration!
